What an Eleven! Of course it's mainly Jerry and Phil, but listen to Weir's part. And they considered dumping him!

If a show without Ron deserves five stars, this is it.

Both sound-wise and performance-wise, I much prefer the prior night. Pretty good show for it's time, though.

I still stand by what I said about the 12th but after listening to this again I need to clarify that this show is absolutely brilliant, and a total gas. I love the Dark Star and the Other One>Cryptical especially.

Really, everything here is just about as good as the night before, it's just that night before has that little extra X in the X-factor.

This is a better show than the previous night.

A beautifully rendered Dark Star in a season of great Dark Stars, though cut off at the beginning. Near perfection. Dark Stars this good are rare after 1970.

There are a lot of great Eleven’s from mid-‘68 to mid-’69. This is one of them. The short jam near the beginning of the Eleven is dynamite, and the rest of it is hot and firey and perfection. The drummers are fabulous here. They, and Jerry and Phil, are all feeding off of each other. And the Eleven vocals are as perfect as Dead show vocals get. Then they change to the minor key for the transition into Death Don’t Have No Mercy, and the energy actually picks up before sliding gently into the ballad.

Jerry delivers a top-notch Death Don’t Have No Mercy. The guitar work is masterful. The vocal is full of soul.

This second set is better than that of the previous night. But as with most of the concerts of the late summer, early fall, the first set is better than the second. After a nicely done Other One, New Potato is average, but ends abruptly to go into drums. It’s jarring. It may be a splice, but it’s hard to tell. Drums is not that interesting--they were better in the Eleven. The show ends with some calming-but-interesting feedback/space.

Pigpen is missed in the second set. The Anthem of the Sun material is just better with Pig.

As for the all-around best shows of 1968, they’re in February-March and August. (The same months as Dick’s Picks Vol. 22 and Two From the Vault.)

There are now 5 copies of this show at archive.org. All are good quality. But you can’t go wrong with the Charllie Miller version.

A pinnacle recording and impeccable performance.